


Illusion of Reality

by Timelesswillows



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cognitive Dissonance, Coma, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Timelesswillows/pseuds/Timelesswillows
Summary: As a young boy Harry Potter makes only one friend before going off to Hogwarts. A friend that stays at Harry's side, present but shadowed by the events that play throughout Harry's life. His friend always helps, never seemingly interacting with others in Harry's life, until eventually this friend reveals the truth of his presence to Harry. A truth that Harry may not be ready to understand or know.*Spoiler* this is my take on the Harry Potter books are all a dream of a heavily abused child.
Kudos: 4





	1. Harry Potter's First Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is my first fic and it's probably not going where you think it's going. Let me know if there are any mistakes or if I should add another tag.
> 
> "Talking"  
> 'Thinking'

When Harry Potter was young and well before he went to Hogwarts or had even heard of the word magic he made a friend in a young boy. A young boy with dark hair and blue eyes who if you squinted and turned your head to the left looked just like Harry. He was the only one that Dudley had never been able to drive away, not that they had ever met as far as Harry was aware but it was better that way because this boy was Harry’s only friend. The only company he was ever able to keep that didn’t outright hate or distrust him.

Sure sometimes his friend had a cruel glint to his eyes and harsh words about the world around them, angry in a way that Harry was never quite comfortable with but he was there.

Harry doesn’t quite remember how it is that they met. It seemed to him that his friend had just appeared one day. Before there was loneliness and solitude but then he was there and that was over with. His friend was always there when Harry needed him. Showing up in the school library to keep him company as he hid from the other kids, walking with him from school on the days his aunt and uncle left him behind after picking up Dudley. Sometimes, his friend even appeared at privet drive when Harry was outside in the garden or mowing the lawn and the Dursley’s were out of the house.

Tom was the only friend that Harry had before Hogwarts. But then he turned 11 and everything changed.

He discovered magic and he was a wizard! He found a world just for him that was full of fantastical things and it was easy for Tom to slip from his mind while he waited for the summer to end. For him to finally be able to go to Hogwarts and make friends. Besides Harry didn’t think there would be a way for him to ever encounter Tom again if they were to be so far apart.

* * *

On the first day of September as Harry Potter boarded the train to Hogwarts he caught a glimpse of someone who looked like Tom on the platform. While initially excited, Harry deflated thinking it must have been his imagination. He continued onward, finding a compartment and making friends with a different little boy with fiery red hair.

During the sorting later that night, after Harry had argued with the hat and just finished being sorted he looked around the room in awe. Allowed the voices to flow over him.

“Ronald Weasley----Gryffindor!”

As he clapped, Harry spotted Tom across the room. Sorted into Slytherin and looking right at him. His heart jumped.

'Tom was here, at Hogwarts!'

Later after he snuck away from the others, they met up in the middle of the night. They were both wizards and together again. Harry was filled with happiness that his first friend would and could continue to be with him in this new part of his life. That night though, Tom was adamant that Harry keep their friendship a secret.

“We’ll have to be quiet about this, the others in Slytherin would kill me if they knew I was best friends with the Boy-Who-Lived and a Gryffindor. We can still meet up we’ll just have to make sure it’s not very often and not in front of too many witnesses.”

“Of course!” Harry agreed, just happy that he’d have Tom there if he needed him.

* * *

It was difficult for them to meet up, sorted into separate houses as they were. But Tom was still there in the quiet moments when Harry sat alone. He was there when Harry decided to take a walk outside or stayed in the library with him after hours to finish a last-minute potions assignment. Tom was beside Harry as he’d always been. Present in a way that nobody else ever was.

“Thank you for the help Tom. Snape would kill me, if I didn’t turn this in on time.” Harry was crouched over his assignment, quickly scribbling down the effects of fluxweed and its properties. Tom has just helped him find a paragraph in their potions book that had all the information Harry needed.

“Harry? Who are you talking to?” Hermione spoke just behind his shoulder. Harry jumped and looked around. Tom must have slipped away when he saw Hermione coming.

“Just a friend Hermione, he was helping me with my assignment and must have slipped away before you got here.”

Hermione gave him a slightly worried looked but seemed to let it slide since she started lecturing him about starting an assignment the night before. Harry could only smile, slightly annoyed but glad to have friends who cared.

* * *

And so that 1st year of Hogwarts, Harry felt a happiness and joy he had never had in his life before. Friends, food, and even an archenemies in Draco Malfoy of all people. Who Tom had no problems complaining about, having to share a dorm room with the other boy was tiring. 

“I’d kill him and leave the body for his father to find if there was a way to do so without getting caught.”

They were outside the castle walking near the Black Lake.

“Tom!” Harry exclaimed in exasperated horror.

Tom smirked, looking over at him.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

Harry shook his head, “You can’t just say these things out loud you know.”

“That wasn’t a no.”

That first year was wonderful. Even with the appearance of Voldemort, Harry wouldn’t trade the magical world or his friends for anything. It felt like he was finally living a life worth having.


	2. Reality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We fast track through Harry's next seven years at Hogwarts, following the events of the books with a few additional moments that always seem to fade from Harry's mind with everything happening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again this kind of goes through the events of the books very quickly because I didn't want to recap things we all know that happens. 
> 
> Will say trigger warning for child abuse, mentions of suicide, and possibly for dissociation. 
> 
> 'thoughts'  
> "talking"

The rest of Harry’s years at Hogwarts passed in much the same manner as his first. Filled with a love and happiness that was indescribable and always contrasted with the difficulties that came with facing Voldemort. 

But Harry had Ron and Hermione beside him, and if they ever weren’t there Tom was. 

If Tom looked a little too similar to the fragment of Tom Riddle’s diary, Harry put it far from his mind. Tom had been in his life long before Hogwarts and magic had ever appeared. 

Though he was often cold or cruel with his words or desires towards others, he was never that way with Harry. Always aiding him with his magical studies and encouraging Harry. Tom often scolded him to take better care of not getting into such dangerous situations. And, as occurred quite often with Harry, when Tom was not there in front of him, interacting with him, Tom seemed to slip away from the awareness of his mind. Thus there was no reason or really any way for Harry to put any thought into why it was that Tom looked so much like Tom Riddle. 

* * *

The situation with Tom however, came to a head during the Horcrux hunt of what should have been Harry Potter’s seventh year at Hogwarts. Ron had just left and Hermione needed time and some space. Harry decided to take a small break from the terror of their lives, apparated to a country side, and then got on a muggle bus with Tom. They traveled from the countryside into a city. A small break, only a day, from the madness. They had a plan to reconvene with Hermione at the end of the day back in the forest. 

For a few hours they lost themselves in the monotony of a crowded city. Merely wandering from one side of the city to another, surrounded by random muggles. They were careful to keep their heads down and to avoid any signs of magic. It passed quickly but for those few hours it felt like paradise. No longer alone, surrounded in the silence and desperation of being on the run. 

On their return to the bus, Harry ended up finding and grabbing a British Newspaper. There was nothing about the mass numbers of muggles that Voldemort was surely killing. None of the cover stories that Harry had seen the last time he’d looked at the muggle news. There was only mention of the upcoming birth of a new member of the royal family. Even a quick bit about the Wimbledon tournaments that were to occur in a few months. His brow furrowed.

'Why was there nothing about bridges collapsing? Or important figures going missing?' Harry thought it was rather odd.

When he and Tom arrived in the forest where Harry was supposed to meet Hermione in, there was no tent, no fire, and no witch waiting for him. So they waited. And waited. And before he knew it, the the sun began to set.

Harry looked over to Tom. “What do you think could be keeping her? You don’t think she’s in trouble do you?”

Tom looked irritated. “It doesn’t matter.”

Now it was Harry’s turn to look irritated “What do you mean it doesn’t matter? Of course it matters. What if she’s lost or hurt or worse captured by death ea-”

Tom huffed, “It doesn’t matter because nothing can actually hurt us. We’re not real enough for anything to be permanent.”

Harry looked confused. “You’re not real?”

Tom’s face turned conflicted for a second, before he spun around and started pacing back and forth. Finally, it seemed he had come to a decision. As he returned to face harry, his face was set in grim determination. 

“I’m only as real as you believe me to be. We are only as real as you believe us to be.”

Harry was confused and frustrated. “What are you talking about? You’re spouting nonsense. What are you then?”

Tom look over Harry’s shoulder across the landscape, releasing a heavy sigh. It was then that Harry noticed the barely there signs showing how truly tired Tom was. The slight downturn of his eyes, the frown tugging at his lips, the wrinkles in his clothes. That was the truly worrying part because Tom at any other time was spotless and would never allow himself to present as anything other than perfection. Being on the run was taking its toll on all of them. 

“You could say that I’m you. A figment of your imagination that appeared at your side when you were young and needed a friend. An attempt by your mind to accept the events of your life. Have you never noticed the lack of interaction between myself and those around you?"

Tom’s focus shifted from whatever it was he had been looking at in the distance to Harry. 

“Didn’t you ever wonder why our stories are so similar to one another? How the events I told you that occurred at the orphanage rang so familiar?”

Harry shifted in place, uncomfortable with the fierce fire in Tom’s eyes that continued to hold his. 

“A different location perhaps, with different names but everything, every word, every beating those were your memories twisted in your attempt to repress and forget.”

Harry’s eyes widened and he felt his heart race and skip a beat. 

‘No.’

“Billy’s rabbit that I strung up looked awfully similar to Dudley’s 7th birthday gift didn’t it? The one he tormented and killed, telling his parents that you had done so. The punishment that day was horrendous. Do you remember the hospital trip?”

‘No. It couldn’t be true. No’

Harry shook his head in denial, backing up from Tom but inside him he felt the truth of the words ring loud.

“I…No you’re wrong. My relatives never liked me that’s true but they never….never…” He trailed off.

Tom’s eyes briefly flashed in annoyance and in the blink of an eye he was towering over Harry, hands gripping his arms. 

“You sicken me Potter, how weak you are.” Tom shook Harry ever so slightly.

“So ready to forgive and forget. So lost in your delusions because you aren’t strong enough to face the truth.” Tom spat out the words like tiny weapons hoping to impale Harry’s body with the truth.

“I won’t allow you to run away any longer. Won’t allow you to pretend that harsh words, heavy hands and an empty stomach sunken in from neglect was anything less than abuse.”

As he continued Tom’s eyes gained a cynical gleam to them. 

“Yes abuse Potter. No matter what any other foolish person may think or dismiss it as. I can see the thoughts spinning wildly in your head. If I had been less of a burden or If I had just listened closer or tried harder.” Tom mocked him. “It wasn’t easy for them, it could have been worse.” Toms face was contorted into an ugly sneer. 

Harry shook his head vigorously “Tom, they weren’t the best but they weren’t the worst either. My aunt and uncle were just-”

Cold laughter spilled from Tom and cut off Harry’s words.

“Aunt and Uncle? Is that what you continue to delude yourself into believing? Couldn’t stand the thought that your own parents weren’t fit to have children, could you? That your own parents hated you? Thought you such a waste of space they’d beat you near to death but showered your younger brother with all the love in the world?”

Harry wrenched himself from Tom’s arms. “My parents died when I was young! Killed by Voldemort, and I went to live with my closest relatives. They would have never – ”

“Never hit you? Never called you an emotionless freak, an abomination? It must be amazing to live in this illusion of yours but open your eyes. Your parents never died, not physically anyway. You, Harry Potter, have never lived with an Aunt Petunia only your poisonous mother Lily. You never lived with an Uncle Vernon only your father James - so filled with hate towards you he can barely stand to breathe in the same room as you. There is no cousin Dudley only a younger brother who was taught from his birth that you were nothing to him, to your parents.”

‘No’ Harry thought ‘Tom was wrong. He couldn’t be telling the truth.’

“Pathetic. Your parents drove you to this. Drove you to this point of madness where you think that magic is real. You’re a fool Harry. There’s no such thing as magic. You needed a reason – there had to be a reason that you were no longer the perfect family after your parents had your brother. Something that explained why they hated you so much but also something that could save you. First you created me, a friend to keep you company. A desperate attempt to save yourself from reality, but I was not enough. So you started to believe in magic.”

Harry was shaking in anger, confusion, hurt, desperation. All of these emotions flashed through him but the largest one was denial.

“No. No! You are wrong. If that’s all it was then how do you explain the things we did? The charms, the transfigurations, the fucking war? I can’t just create an entire society inside of my head? And if it is fake why would there be any war? Why would there b-”

Toms eyes were sympathetic and filled with pity as he cut Harry off.

“Your body is currently in a coma in a hospital in downtown London. You tried to commit suicide – tried to drown yourself, just couldn’t take it any more.”

And that is the moment that Harry started to remember. 

“I…why did I…?”

“You said you wanted to be free.”

* * *

Harry remembered the rain. Splashing on the cement beside him and on his face hiding his tears. 

It had been raining the night that Harry’s parents sent him over the edge and he had decided he could no longer take it anymore. The pavement wet and reflecting the lights of passing cars. Harry thought he remembered not being able to breathe and harsh waters until he saw a flash of rusted metal and then darkness. 

From there, it was only splashes of light, hands on his chest, and a giant man with mangey hair telling him to hold on. He only had to hold on until they arrived to the hospital.

'No.'

Harry shook his head.

“You’re wrong Tom. You’re lying! This is real, you are real, this war is real.”

Tom looked angry, disgust twisted his features. 

“If you want to fight a war inside your head feel free to do so, but eventually you’ll have to wake up.”

Then Tom was gone. 

For a second all was quiet before Harry heard someone rustling behind him. He turned around and saw Hermione bustling about with the pan over the fire, the rising sun reflecting off her curly hair. The tent was set up beside them again as if it had never been gone.

A bird chirped shocking Harry back into motion, helping Hermione gather and put away their supplies. And as often happened with Tom, the memory of his presence started to slip from Harry's thoughts. Everything that occurred with Tom was pushed to the back of his mind, and this time Harry was determined to forget. He would return to his life and the war; Tom’s words were best left forgotten.

‘They couldn’t be true, could they?’

* * *

But as the actual events with Tom slipped away, the words said and the doubt they stirred remained with Harry. Pushed aside as they were, they floated back in during the few quiet moments that were had jumping from place to place and tracking down Horcruxes.

Yet life continues. So Hermione and Harry continued on their hunt, reunited with Ron, snuck back into Hogwarts and fought a battle against a mad man.

Then Harry was confronted with another truth he didn’t want but had to accept and walked to his death.

As Voldemort raised his wand, Harry had a silent moment. Heartbeat ringing loudly in his ears, all was calm for those few precious seconds before his death. One thought ran through his mind, if Tom was right and this was all happening in his head, he would very much like to wake up.

After a flash of green light and brief darkness, that is exactly what Harry did. He woke up.

* * *

Harry Potter awoke to a white room, with something stuck in his throat. Instead of the afterlife he had pictured, he was in a hospital room, a sharp beeping next to his head, and a tube down his throat. It was a white empty room, with no flowers or cards or family at his side.

His body shifted and panic set in. Instead of his parents embrace after a quick heroic death, Harry woke from a coma, alone, and with the fading images of Hogwarts slowly disappearing from his mind.

‘No,’ he thought desperately, ‘No.’

Two nurses rushed into the room as Harry’s body flailed in panic.

“Harry! Calm down. I’m nurse Granger and this is nurse Weasley. We’ll help you but you have to calm down. You’ve been in a coma for a year. If you keep this up you’ll...”

Her voice came in and out. The words flowing over Harry’s head as he looked past the nurses. Nurses who looked vaguely like his friends, the closest to family he had.

Was this real? Had Hogwarts been a dream of a desperate lonely boy? Was Tom right and everything of the last few years all just a part of a dream conceived in a coma? If it was then would he every be able to go back? If he slipped back into a coma would he even be able to return to Hogwarts, to home?

Harry wished with all his might to go back to Hermione and Ron and _Magic_. Merlin please give him back magic. Even if he had to deal with a world at war, he’d take it. Harry wished and wished that he would go back to sleep and go _home_.

This is one wish that Harry Potter would never get. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Tom has been a hallucination in Harry's head since childhood. Then the entire world of Harry Potter was created as a dream in his comatose head. Tom remained as a hallucination inside of this dream world.
> 
> The reason Tom looks like harry is because he is a part of Harry. The reason that Harry's enemy is Voldemort is because a part of Harry hates himself for not being able to escape the abuse and blames a part of himself for what occurred. So if he defeats these parts of himself he'll be able to live a happy life.


End file.
